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Yellin: Saints got what they deserved

NEW ORLEANS – The New Orleans Saints got exactly what they deserved this season.

We all have right tackle Zach Strief to thank for that insightful little ditty, as he — being the team’s resident “Good Guy” — dropped that bomb after the Saints were thoroughly thumbed by the Carolina Panthers in Week 14, and at home, no less.

The Saints did get what they deserved: a losing record (7-9), no playoff berth, a late-season collapse at home, the 13th pick in the coming draft (how unlucky can one get?). Yet, perhaps most important, they got a swift kick their collective midsection — a wake-up call meant to spur the realization that past successes aren’t simply absorbed through osmosis the moment players don their black and gold jersey for the first time.

“The reality is we got away from some stuff that made us good,” Strief said.

OK, but now that it’s been identified, can it be fixed — and quickly, at that? There’s a finite window that’s fast closing for quarterback Drew Brees. At 36, his best days will soon become his last — and let’s face it, the Saints are only going as far as he takes them.

Looking back through the lens of the season, it’s obvious the preseason expectations of a return to championship glory were, at best, unrealistic. That 2009 team — the team all future iterations are, and will be, judged against — is but a shell of itself.

Gone was the hardened, battle-tested roster of castoffs and no-names with axes to grind. Also gone: so many vocal leaders, particularly on the defensive side of the ball.

The Saints roster, as now constructed, is largely comprised of players who have yet to experience championship success, or, for that matter, understand what it take to achieve it.

“Those things that happened here in the past were difficult,and I think sometimes you come in just with an outsiders’ perception of what a place is. It’s, well, they’ve been good so we’re good, and that’s not how it works,” Strief said.

Last season’s success, an 11-5 record that included a playoff berth and Wild Card road victory in Philadelphia, was apparently fool’s gold — a season that masked a more daunting reality: New Orleans was — and, in fact, still is — in full-blown transition mode.

By 2013, only 14 players from the 2009 championship team remained. But after eight were jettisoned during the offseason, just six — Strief, quarterback Drew Brees, running back Pierre Thomas, wide receiver Marques Colston, offensive guard Jahri Evans and punter Thomas Morstead — were left this season. And there’s a distinct possibility that number will continue to fall.

The 2014 Saints lacked that je ne sais quoi so readily apparent in 2009. Really, it’s no mystery as to what went wrong, Stief said, “We did some little things wrong early that set us down a path to not be successful. … Obviously as the year goes on, you say, ‘That’s not a little thing; we lost some games by large margins. That’s not a little thing’ — and that’s true.

“But that all started and snowballed from losing some close games in bad ways, in ways that we haven’t been around here in the past.”

It all began in Atlanta when Marques Colston fumbled in overtime as the Saints were marching toward a victory in their season opener. Then, it continued the next week in Cleveland, where the Browns stumbled to victory thanks to a several inexcusable mistakes and penalties by the Saints defense during Cleveland’s game-winning, 14-play, 85-yard drive. And frankly, it continued until the season’s end.

“We turned into a team that we used to almost game-plan against to say, ‘Hey, this team eventually will hurt itself, so we’ve just gotta hang around until they do.’ We’ve said that here before — and we became that team this year,” Strief said. “…We would essentially force the loss on ourselves.”

I asked several Saints to describe the organization’s bedrock principles. The answers I received included wild variations, the common thread being many young players had difficulty verbalizing their answers. When I informed head coach Sean Payton, while also putting the same question to him, he found it quite disturbing.

“That needs to be the same answer,” he responded. “Smart, tough, disciplined guys that No. 1, do not beat themselves. There is a path and there is a, I guess you would say, a traveled path that we understand. That is the thing we are not going to deviate from and it is validated. Look, every year you look what is winning and it is validating, not only with our history, but in the success of other teams.”

Clearly the 2014 season was marred by a disconnect between the team’s few remaining champions and their younger, less-accomplished teammates. The leaders ought — and appear to be — shouldering much of the blame in that regard.

There was a failure to adequately verbalize the importance of “character,” said Strief, who also believes this past season will serve to help future teams establish their own identity, one that better reflects the organization’s principles.

“Look, we learned a lot this year, from the top down, from the coaching staff to the players to the practice squad, we learned a lot about what we can’t do, things we can’t allow, things that can’t happen, and this team will grow from that because we have good leadership,” he said. “I think that the feeling of the days are gone because we had a bad season, I think is a little misguided.”

Sure, there were stories of late arrivals to meetings, practices and even the team charter; some even include players showing up inebriated or not at all. Those tales are littered throughout the professional world, regardless of whether or not you wear a helmet and pads to work.

“The reality is there’s a time when things can turn around and there’s a time when things are what they are. And so I think clarity comes with that realization,” Strief said. “I think by the time you realize there’s some stuff going on that isn’t good, it’s hard to teach it quickly. It’s not something that’s easy. When I was in college, my coach preached your attitude is a decision you make every day. So when you wake up in the morning, if you’re in a bad mood, that’s a decision you made. Well, that’s a very easy thing to say and a very difficult thing to live.

“So it’s not something where you can tell a guy, ‘You don’t understand how up you have to be for these games,’ and then he’s just up. He has to know it from the beginning of the offseason and it has to be preached constantly, it has to be beat into you because it’s not an easy thing to do.”

Yes, the Saints got exactly what they deserved this season, and the sheer fact they recognize that bodes well for the future.